


a battle of (nit)wits

by kattyshack



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Banter, F/M, Flirting, Fluff, Humor, also robb is wildly uncomfortable with jon’s nerd-ass attempts to seduce his sister, jon sings barry manilow bc this is my world and y’all are just livin in it, the fic about nothing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-03
Updated: 2018-04-03
Packaged: 2019-04-18 02:53:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,944
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14203473
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kattyshack/pseuds/kattyshack
Summary: Robb and Jon are having another mostly-friendly disagreement, and they need a tiebreaker. Enter Sansa, who doesn’t care, but she’s trapped in the car with them and so she doesn’t have a say in the matter. Lucky for her, though, the boys are willing to stoop to obvious bribery to curry her favour — so at least she can get -something- out of their complete idiocy.





	a battle of (nit)wits

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Tate](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tate/gifts).



> a/n: i know y’all are thirsty for more “when we kiss: mmmm, fire,” to which i say… RELAX. it’s COMING. (also i love you.) but atm i’m running on three hours’ sleep and more iced coffees and cokes than actual human blood, so here’s a fic about nothing until i can get my shit together
> 
> anyway in that episode of friends — “the one with the joke,” i near DIE every time i rewatch and chandler says to monica “i’m your only chance to have a baby” to get her to take his side in his debate with ross. so natch i thought “this, but with jonsa.” (but keep in mind that i haven’t written the fic around the specifics of the episode! — just that line of dialogue and the general gist that is robb-and-jon-in-a-tiff)
> 
> for my gal tate, because it’s taking me forever and a day to polish off my other gift fic to you, so pls accept this as a suitable placeholder for the time being

Sansa doesn’t even know what they’re bickering about this time.

It’s always something with the pair of them — _something_ without ever actually being anything at all:

What to listen to on the ride to class or work or out for a grocery run — which is a fair enough point of contention, but in the end Robb and Jon always settle on an oldies station, so what’s the _point_ of all the back-and-forth? _That_ gives Sansa a worse headache than when the two of them belt along, violently out-of-tune, to the Four Tops. (“Sugar Pie, Honey Bunch” is an especial favourite, if only because it’s so easy to — again, tunelessly — verbalize the instrumental bits.)

Who made up that joke — and the jokes are never even good to begin with, mind, and more often than not it was really Theon who had come up with it, anyway.

Who ate the last of the frozen taquitos and who, by extension, was responsible for buying more — but they already split the cost of groceries, excepting Jon’s indecently priced almond milk and Robb’s inexplicable obsession with asparagus. Such proclivities are their own personal responsibilities, respectively, but the frozen taquitos are a group effort and should be treated _thusly_ , god damn it. (Or so Sansa thinks, and has told them on several occasions.)

Which one of them made the pretty barista — _Talisa_ — at their frequented coffeeshop smile. Although, funnily enough, perhaps, this is the one thing among all their talking points that Jon won’t claim a right to. Robb just seems to like bringing it up, because Jon gives credit where credit is due, and all the while he’s shooting nervous glances Sansa’s way.

(She entertains the notion that maybe Jon doesn’t want her thinking that he’s eager to earn smiles from other girls, but that’s… Well, that’s a dangerous thought to have for a girl like Sansa, whose heart’s been broken a time too many and really she should be playing it _safe_ instead of foolishly falling for her brother’s best friend.

(And yet… _Ha!_ Here they are, nevertheless.

(But this really isn’t what she’s supposed to be thinking about right now, so back to it:)

When the boys have exhausted such sort-of topics for debate, they revert to their tried-and-true standby: Whose turn it is to spring for gas — even though, in Sansa’s opinion, they should all chip in, since it’s Jon’s car and he’s the one chauffeuring them around from uni to work to home — not necessarily in that order, and the route differs every day. She and Robb — often Theon, too, and occasionally the other Starks who need to go here or there when they’re in town — could just as easily hop a bus. But the boys share a flat anyway; and when Sansa had moved to White Harbor for uni, Jon had been rather adamant that he play stagecoach for her, too.

“The public transit’s not so bad as it is down in, say, King’s Landing,” he’d admitted (and rightfully so, because the transportation ‘round the capital is _dreadful_ , to say the least — overpriced and overcrowded with the very worst sorts), “but that doesn't make it any good, either. Go on, Sansa, you can ride shotgun every time. I’ll be tearing my hair out with worry for you all the time if you don’t.”

And Sansa couldn’t have _that_ , now, could she? She quite likes Jon’s hair. What a waste of curls it would be, when she could save them both the trouble of such a well-coiffed loss by simply sliding into the passenger seat of Jon’s car whenever she had a need of it.

He’d smiled so brightly when she’d agreed to it, too — all upturned lips and crinkles at the corners of his eyes, and pretty pink blotches that bloomed on his cheeks when Theon had made some jibe about a _knight-in-shining-armour_ — and how was Sansa meant to resist all that?

So here they are, half a year later, and not for the first time Sansa is beginning to regret the arrangement — if only because Robb and Jon couldn’t bloody well _shut up_ whenever they were stuck in mid-afternoon traffic.

“Oh, give it a rest, will you?” Sansa snaps when their relentless back-and-forth refuses to cease.

“We’ll give it a rest when he admits he’s wrong,” Robb declares from the backseat, infuriating as ever. But then Jon’s putting his hand on her knee and somehow that relieves some of the tension that’s coiling in Sansa’s muscles. “Break the tie for us, San. Tell him he’s wrong, and we’ll be quiet all the way home, nothing but the radio — hey.”

Robb frowns, just slightly, when he leans forward and catches sight of Jon’s thumb rubbing circles ‘round Sansa’s knee. “What’s this, then? Why’ve you got your hand on my sister’s leg, Snow?”

Jon shrugs, but doesn’t let up his ministrations. “She’s got nice legs.”

“Shut up.” But Sansa returns his grin, however reluctantly (she’s meant to be annoyed with him, after all, but that’s difficult to remember when he’s rubbing her leg and looking at her _like that_ ).

“Oh, _I_ see what you’re doing,” Robb says, although Jon, for his part, is quite sure that Robb doesn’t see what he’s about at all. He points an accusatory finger at his best mate, even as he slumps back against his seat. “You’re trying to use your — your _wiles_ to get my sister on your side. Pathetic. You haven’t even got proper wiles. It’ll never work.”

 _It might_ , Sansa admits, but would only ever do so privately.

“I don’t even know what you’re arguing about,” she says just as Jon’s defending himself, “I’ve got wiles aplenty, thank you.”

Neither of them are bothered by Sansa’s proclaimed ignorance; she need only settle the dispute with one of their names, whether or not she’s got all the facts to support her decision. Besides, facts are vastly overrated when bribery works wonders.

At the next available opportunity, Jon takes a sharp turn onto a side road and makes his way ‘round back to Hot Pie’s. “You just need waffle fries,” he says to Sansa, “and then you’ll see my side of things.”

Sansa doesn’t bother to say that she doesn’t see _any_ side of things, as she wasn’t listening closely enough to ascertain what they’d been sniping about this time — because she simply _does not_ care — but she really could go for some waffle fries, actually, so who is she to argue?

Unfortunately for Jon, though, Robb’s out of the car before he can park it, wallet already in hand as he makes a break for the café’s entrance. Jon leaps from his seat and tears after him, leaving Sansa alone in the car, doors open, engine running, and radio on. Fittingly enough, it’s playing “Holding Out for a Hero,” and Sansa thinks that’s nothing if not apropos, if only because she’s getting free food out of the deal.

As it transpires, Robb beats Jon to the counter, and he still looks rather smug about it when they return to the car, takeaway bags and all.

“Don’t be such a sore loser,” Robb tells him, good-naturedly enough as he fancies himself winning Sansa’s favour when she downs half her fries and shake in one go.

“Just wait ‘til I use my wiles on her,” Jon warns, making Robb snort and Sansa choke.

“What do you want to use your wiles on me for, anyway?” Sansa ventures to ask, despite the potential for humiliation and rejection — and with her brother bearing witness to it all, no less.

But sometimes, when Jon meets her eye — and he does it like she’s the only thing in the world, too — she feels brave. Brave enough to _ask_ and to actually want to know the answer.

Now Jon looks at her as though he’s not quite sure how to answer; not because he doesn’t know the answer, but because he doesn’t know how she doesn’t know it herself already.

(There’s a lot of _not knowing_ going around, but isn’t that just the nature of fools in love to begin with?)

“Yeah,” Robb says before Sansa can so much as hope for some grand romantic declaration to burst forth from Jon’s unfairly kissable lips, “why _do_ you wanna use your wiles on my sister so badly?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Jon remarks airily as he restarts the car and pulls back onto the congested main road. He chances another look at Sansa — earnest, hopeful, _meaningful_ , although she doesn’t know what it means just yet. “I’m just… being myself.”

Truly, helplessly mooning over Sansa _does_ qualify as Jon _being himself_ , so at least he’s being honest, if not particularly up-front about it at the moment.

He _will_ , just preferably not when her brother’s squinting warningly at him from the backseat of his car, with another quarter-of-an-hour’s journey left to them, give or take.

Of course, that doesn’t mean Jon can’t make a fool of himself in the meantime. He really does want to win this argument with Robb, and perhaps win Sansa over in the process, too. If anything, it’s another opportunity to flirt poorly but shamelessly with her, and since when has Jon been able to resist such an opportunity?

Read: never.

So when Springsteen’s “I’m Goin’ Down” starts on the radio next, Jon really can’t resist his own baser instincts. He clears his throat to get Sansa’s attention — Robb be damned — and when he’s sure he’s got it, he gives her an exaggerated once-over and a suggestive eyebrow waggle to the tune of _“Down, down, down, down, I’m goin’ down, down, down, down…”_

“Oh my god.” Sansa tries not to laugh, but it’s a wasted effort when next Jon tries to wink at her, but only succeeds in blinking one eye slightly faster than the other. It’s so endearing that she could kiss him for it, right here in his car in the middle of a traffic jam, if only it weren’t for —

“What are you doing?” Robb leans forward to butt his head between them, a hand on each of their headrests as he swivels his gaze back and forth. “What is he doing?”

“Winning.” Jon shoots her a cheeky grin. “Aren’t I?”

Sansa ignores the little thrill in her tummy and rolls her eyes. “He’s being lascivious.”

Jon scoffs. “I’m being _romantic_ , watch —” He presses a couple of buttons on the steering wheel control, and suddenly the music changes and now the car’s interior is alive with a bass-intensified Barry Manilow.

“Oh, god,” Robb and Sansa groan in unison, but Jon’s only just begun, and the traffic’s come to another standstill. The doors’ locks _click_ in a foreboding sort of unison, and Robb feigns a few exaggerated sobs before his dramatics are drowned out by Jon’s own —

 _“Ooh, Sansa! You came and you gave without taking, but I sent you away!”_ He pauses to promise, “I never would, though — _Oooooh, Sansa! You kissed me and stopped me from shaking!_ — you absolutely could, by the way, that’s an open invitation — _And I need you today, oooh Sansa — !_ ”

“Don’t be persuaded by his completely shite serenade!” Robb implores over Jon’s baritone. “We’re _family_ , Sansa. That’s the _most important_ thing.” He leans forward in his seat again to intone in a theatrical whisper, _“The lone wolf dies, but the pack survives!”_

Sansa pushes her brother’s face, and he slumps, all melodrama, back into his seat. “Are we really going to start quoting Dad when he’s had one too many and starts in on the importance of our familial bond?”

“Well,” Robb sniffs imperiously, “it wouldn’t hurt for you to remember it every once in awhile.”

“What you really should remember, Sansa —” Jon begins in tones of all seriousness, his serenade forgotten as he levels her with his grimmest expression(™) when they finally hit the next stoplight “— is that I’m your _only chance_ to have a baby.”

“WHAT?” Robb squawks from the back.

Meanwhile Sansa laughs out a protest, “No you’re not!”

“Oh- _ho_ , _yes_ , I am,” Jon insists with an assuredness almost unbecoming of a man who’d never so much as asked her on a date, and now he’s calling dibs on her eggs as if he owns the place.

When Sansa points this out — demurely as ever, because she’s nothing if not consistently polite, even when it’s more a thin veneer for her impatience, dubiousness, what-have-you — though, Jon only chuckles in a way that gets her toes to curling in her ache-inducing, faux-suede boots.

“Sansa, love, please.” Jon offers her a sardonic little grin as he taps on the gas, inching the car along when the light goes green and the traffic proceeds at its regularly scheduled snail’s pace. “Give me five minutes alone with you in this car and you’ll be begging me to be your baby daddy.”

“ _Kindly_ never say anything like that to me ever again,” Sansa requests as Robb huffs an incredulous _Excuse me?!_ from behind them. He is promptly ignored as Sansa huffs herself now, imitating Jon’s rough accent, “ _Baby daddy_ , my arse.”

“How is impregnating my sister going to help you win this argument?” Robb demands. “We might have another little _spat_ coming, mate, if that’s how you plan to go about your undeserved victory!”

“You’re right,” Jon sighs, resigned to the fact before he snaps out of it long enough to add, “Not about the proper way to cook an egg, I mean, you’re still absolutely out-of-bounds about that —”

“ _That’s_ what you’re arguing about? Ugh!” Sansa chucks a used, crumpled takeaway napkin at Jon and another at Robb. “I’ve got a stress headache the size of the Great Grass Sea because the two of you can’t agree on the best kind of egg? Which, by the way, is scrambled on toast, so if neither of you is pulling for that, then —”

“HA!” Robb bangs on the back of Jon’s headrest triumphantly, his sister’s makeshift projectile forgotten in his lap. “HA! I _told_ you, Snow, _I told you!_ No better way to have an egg than _that_! _Overeasy_ , ha! I don’t think so!”

Jon takes one hand off the wheel to swat at Robb’s continuously pounding fist, but he says nothing more of it as he pulls into the back parking lot of their flat. Sansa’s staying with them for the weekend, seeing as her friend and flatmate, Margaery, has her girlfriend over to visit (Sansa hasn’t been _sexiled_ , _per se_ , but she also knew she wouldn’t get any rest with Margaery and Yara going at it the way they do). So while she doesn’t question why Jon’s not taking her home, her curiosity _is_ piqued when, once parked, Jon barks at Robb to “Get out of the car, idiot.”

“I figured as much, since we’re home and all.”

“ _You’re_ getting out. Sansa and I are staying right here. Clearly she needs convincing, and I’m not letting her out of the car ‘til I’ve won.”

“Gross.” Robb kicks the door open and ambles out readily, almost as though he’d been expecting this to happen sooner or later. “If you plan on _convincing_ my sister all weekend — _arsehole_ , by the way — maybe I’ll see about staying at Theon’s.”

“You do that,” Jon encourages, although his tone betrays nothing and only serves to confuse Sansa further.

“Jon,” she prompts him once Robb’s stalked off to the building, shaking his head all the while, and the car doors are shut and locked, engine off but the radio still murmuring. “You know I really don’t care which way you take your eggs, I was just —”

“I know,” Jon says as he clicks his seatbelt off, and then — before Sansa can ask him what he means to convince her of, in that case — he near-on lunges across the seat, hands buried in her crimson waves of hair, and he’s kissing her like _that’s_ what he’s been thinking about the entire trip home, discussion of the proper preparation of various breakfast foods notwithstanding.

He’s already had his tongue in her mouth, swallowing her surprised-turned-appreciative hums of approval, when he breaks the kiss — just barely, as his mouth continues to brush hers with every word when he says through a series of ragged breaths, “In case you were wondering, I’ve wanted to do that since… well, every time you get into my car, actually.”

“Oh.” Sansa’s breath is coming just as shallow as his, cheeks just as pink and lips just as tingly. Her hands curl ‘round the backs of his, still laced through her loose locks of hair, and she swallows thickly. “Well, best if we spend the weekend making up for that, then, seeing as I’ve been in your car roughly… ”

She tries to do a quick calculation, but Sansa’s never been any good at maths; and even if she _had_ , now Jon’s plucking kisses from her lips as she tries to speak, and that’s just no good for brain processing in general. So instead she just slips her tongue back into Jon’s mouth and keens when he groans, pained and satisfied and eager for more all at once.

“Too many times,” Jon pants as the kissing goes on and on and wondrously, breathtakingly  _on_. “Too many times without doing _this_.”

And Sansa — people-pleaser as she is, perhaps, but now Jon’s pleasing _her_ just as well — is inclined to agree.

(Henceforth, she’s sure, and no matter the nature of the boys’ car trip debates, Sansa won’t be able to find it within herself to regret the driving arrangements ever again.

(And in the event that she ever _does_ … Well, Jon is quite happy to make it up to her after.)


End file.
